


Maybe the Beer.

by his tongue and liver (doubleinfinity)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Normal High School, Boys In Love, Childhood Trauma, M/M, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but that's like, chris a football player, chris just wants to help eddie, little boys, obvious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 01:36:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8825023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/his%20tongue%20and%20liver
Summary: Chris is a little blond puffball who plays football and likes to dwell in the noise of mid-pubescent droning.  Eddie is sort of just... little.  He'd dissolve into himself if he could.
Chris just wants to keep him safe.





	

A thousand blonde tufts, and one body across from him, and two cups in Chris’ hands.

Eddie slumps back on the other’s bed, curling inward as he accepts the hollowed dome of plastic, biting down on the rim and feeling bubbles of caffeine fizz against his lip. Chris shuts the bedroom door behind him, closing out the sound of somebody watching tv as they put the living room back together again.

“Maybe the beer woulda been better, but all’s left is soda.” He offers a regretful smile fitted into a loose shrug. Eddie makes a noise to placate, but there’s no effort in it.

Chris looks to the side, fumbling to pull his forearm into his hand, anything to create stimulation and fill the spaces being made. He absently sips from the edge of the red cup, trying not to look too carefully at his things. Eddie isn’t really part of the room, doesn’t make sense next to the jersey displayed on the wall, or the one crumpled in the laundry basket. Or the posters that border the blurred edges of the difference between Hot Wheels and Nascar. Or the mugs he didn’t clean off his windowsill. Not even the books stacked on his dresser are willing to take Eddie in.

But he’s still here, elbows bent between his legs, pulling down on his lip to try to keep something in.

“Sorry,” Chris tries again, looking down this time, knowing Eddie isn’t going to meet his eyes. “Thought you’d feel better if you had fun. Just wanted you to meet everyone.” It’s the same sort of half-defensive apology he offered when he’d brought Eddie to the familiar space of his room, saving him from the crowd of people on the lower floors who caused him to shrivel up in that familiar way, even though Chris didn’t really know what went wrong. Maybe Eddie _didn’t_ go in his world. The more he tried to force him through, the less of Eddie it seemed he knew.

On the bed, Eddie is burning with ashamed rage, trapped in a loop of trying to force himself to say something out loud that will reach Chris and free him, but he’s stuck in his mind, horribly self-aware of how fucked up he’s gotten. He loops his finger around the outer ring of the cup, once, then again, trying to clear away drops of soda and then the small hairs and flecks of dirt his finger leaves behind, thinking that he’ll be able to say something freeing as soon as he gets it right. But every distance around leaves a new sort of blemish. Every second of silence is a permanent step away from the chance to say something.

He feels terror, not knowing if he can’t stop, or if he just hasn’t tried hard enough yet.

“Can I drive you home?”

Eddie grits his teeth. Not the right words. The loop extends.

On instinct, Chris walks towards Eddie and sinks down on the bed next to him, pulling the cup out of his palm and placing both of theirs on the ground. Something clicks, and Eddie can finally look at him again.

“You want to sleep on my floor?” Chris offers, lifting his elbow up to just brush a small, new cut on Eddie’s forehead, looking wonderingly at him.

He doesn’t ask, it’s not his business, but sometimes he has the sense to pay attention to Eddie’s new bruises just to show that somebody notices. Sometimes they still kiss, pressed down into the attic space of his room, with the small skylight window poked into the cedar boards above looking down, but Chris doesn’t feel right trying anymore. Eddie flinches when they touch. He jolts when they’ve been touching for minutes and Chris moves. It wasn’t like this in the beginning, when they used to have sex, but he was different then, too. He didn’t care so much about hiding all of it. Now he’s got too much to lose to let anybody know what is, or was between them.

In the end, he doesn’t need to get out the sleeping bag. Eddie leans into him, pressing against the male’s torso as he takes in breath. He has a chance to hold Eddie through the night, sleeping with the other’s warmth pressed into him.

But in the longer term, Chris has no idea where to point him. And he knows that Eddie isn’t going to stay with him for long. He thinks again about presenting the question, if he can sleep with other people, make this something different- cross back over that weird line again, which neither of them have been keeping track of. But he wants to do this more than he wants to do that. He wants to do it until Eddie is too small to fit in his arms anymore. He’ll grab at the scraps for as long as he can, stretch it out until the inevitable day when Eddie stops being able to give him anything. He could have prolonged the party tonight, sent Eddie home, and forgotten about it; his friends would have gotten him through. But maybe that’s not what he wants, not right now. Maybe the beer would only make him forget these precious moments.


End file.
